Ladies, gentlemen and others, welcome to the coliseum. If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by the amount of named and important characters in One Piece then hold on to your seatbelts as we’re about to ramp things up to eleven. Although both Fishman Island and Punk Hazard are part of the New World in One Piece, it really feels like Dressrosa is where we’re properly diving into the chaos that is the second half of the Grand Line. With the stakes rising but also the cast increasing steadily, this arc can drag on at times but its highlights are memorable for years to come. Let’s get started, shall we?
Instead of going through this volume from start to finish, let’s split it up into the different groups that the crew splits up in, obviously keeping the group that gets into the most shenanigans for last. First, we leave Nami, Brook, Chopper and Momo on the ship. They’re there to defend it from enemies. The ship is parked outside of Dressrosa proper, while the rest of the crew makes landfall. Not much happens to this group in this volume except for the fact that while they are distracting Momo from how sad and worried he is, they hear a strange voice coming from inside the ship. We don’t quite know yet who this is or what’s going on, but something is definitely happening to them next volume.
The second group is Law’s group. He is joined by Usopp, Robin and Caesar, and the four of them are headed to Greenbit to drop off Caesar for Doflamingo to retrieve. They skip through most of Dressrosa and then cross the dangerous bridge that leads to Greenbit, which is technically not available to travel, but when has that ever stopped pirates before. When they get to Greenbit, they learn through a call from Sanji that Doflamingo didn’t actually quit the seven warlords like the newspapers said he did, and instead has lured them all into a trap. He’s headed towards Greenbit as they’re speaking, but he’s also not the only one. On Greenbit, Robin and Usopp find themselves kidnapped by Tontattas, a race of tiny people who live on the island and are incredibly gullible.
Now then, with the two groups that don’t have all that much happening to them out of the way, let’s move on to the main group which consists of Luffy, Sanji, Zoro, Kin’emon and Franky. You know, the responsible members of the crew. After getting dressed for the type of island that Dressrosa supposedly is, they mingle with the crowd and get some food at a local casino. The city is filled with excitement and dancers and to the crew’s surprise, there are even talking and living toys walking the streets, living amongst the people of Dressrosa. It doesn’t look at all like a kingdom that just lost its ruler, and we learn later on why that is as well. In the restaurant they encounter a strange blind man who is being swindled by the casino operators. He keeps winning but they keep telling him that he’s losing, so Luffy steps in. The man then uses his strange powers to blow a hole into the building and thanks Luffy for being kind, but refuses to give his name due to this probably causing issues for the both of them. As he leaves the restaurant we learn that he is one of the new admirals, Fujitora. He’s not the only navy presence on the island as we quickly learn that CP0, the organization that’s above CP9, is also on Dressrosa. Things are looking to get dangerous for the Straw Hats.
Speaking of which, they get split up pretty rapidly. Sanji encounters a dancer named Violet and goes with her. I assume that’s where he learns that Doflamingo never stepped down from the warlords, which he informs Law off later in the volume. Zoro runs off to find his weapon, which was stolen by one of the Tontattas named Wicka. He catches up to her and eventually they start moving together, learning that their goals are somewhat aligned. Kin runs off to go find Kanjuuro, his samurai friend that’s supposedly somewhere on this island. This leaves us with only Luffy and Franky still together.
After some interrogation, the duo learns that there is a big show happening at the coliseum and the prize for winning the fights is the flame flame fruit, which used to belong to Luffy’s brother Ace. Luffy obviously wants to enter the arena and while he does so, Franky meets up with a toy soldier with only one leg, who seems to have a connection to one of the gladiators. They’re going to try and find the factory and Franky learns that the toy soldier is also planning to take down Doflamingo. He leaves Luffy on his own to split off as well.
Finally, let’s talk about the coliseum. Diamante, the executive working under Doflamingo, is hosting this event in which four blocks of contenders are whittled down to four champions who then fight against four executives from the Doflamingo family. The winner of that final round will be the one to get the Flame Flame fruit. Luffy – who is disguised (poorly) as Lucy – is in block C. We see block A’s finale and the winner of this block is Jesus Burgess. It’s good that Oda decided to not play out all four blocks in full, and only show the result of this one, because the manga in this part is already far too long with too many characters. But we do get to see block B play out, and it is a banger of a match. In block B are a few characters that are noteworthy so let’s go through them quickly. First off we have Bellamy, the spring man who was beaten mercilessly by Luffy back in Jaya. He has since gone to Skypiea as well and has become a new man. He threatens that he might have harmed the people there, but I find it very hard to believe that Bellamy at that time in the story would be able to harm Wyper or even the other strong Shandia warriors. I’m sure Skypiea is fine. There’s the king of Prodence, Elizabello, who has an incredibly powerful punch that he can only use once every so often. We also meet Hack, a fishman karate expert who will be relevant later in the story as well and finally we meet the winner of this block, a pirate by the name of Bartolomeo who seems to be a real piece of work. He has a nasty attitude, he works the crowd against him and he even pisses into the water while the crowd is watching. He has the Barrier Barrier fruit and uses it to great effect in this battle. When he crosses his fingers, an impenetrable barrier appears that saves him from Elizabello’s punch.
Luffy’s C block is also filled with strong warriors, the most notable ones being Don Chin Jao and his grandsons Sai and Boo. Don Chin Jao has a grudge against Garp and as he recognizes Luffy, he fights him instead, but is restrained by his grandsons and told to keep this energy for the match. There’s also a giant called Hajrudin participating in this match.
Then the final block, block D, also has some interesting fighters in it. There’s a rookie called Cavendish who wanted to do nothing but slay, but was removed from the front page when Luffy made waves in the Marineford war. He’s a bit jealous of this and that’s why he dislikes Luffy. There’s Rebecca, a young woman who seems to have a connection to the toy soldier that is currently with Franky. There are of course more characters, but I think I’ve mentioned all of the particularly important ones by now. Next volume we’ll see how Luffy fights his battle while he unleashes his inner gladiator after seeing a statue of a former gladiator who was once powerful but now completely forgotten.
I think that’s about it. Welcome back to the weekly One Piece Wednesday updates, I hope it isn’t too much information at once, but if this is your first time reading these volumes I suppose this might serve as a nice filter to take out the few dozen named characters that really don’t end up being all that important. As usual, I hope you enjoyed this recap and thanks for reading!
Opal Kaharis 